Last week I celebrated reaching 1.5k likes on Facebook. Call me sad, but I felt like it was some sort of achievement. I have never paid for any likes and I hoped that all 1.5k of these people liked my page because they enjoyed my photographs. However, the kind people at Facebook then deleted inactive accounts which made my number drop to 1,473. At first I was kinda sad.
Then I realised, if I imagined 1,473 standing infront of me looking at my work, I’d get stage fright. That’s a lot of people!
Also, because Facebook has made interaction terribly difficult, it means actual real people who are interested in my work get to see it and it’s not going to inactive accounts (another reason not to buy fake likes).
Lastly, why do we (myself included) feel validated by how many likes we have? Sure, some photographers have 100k plus likes, but why should another photographer with only 200 likes feel bad?
If you’re earning a living from something you love, then I say we should try harder to not count the likes and enjoy all 1,473 likes we have. Myself included.